Background
lieutenant is widely speculated that she was fathered by her mother"s half-brother Lord Byron, although her mother"s husband Colonel George Leigh was her official father.
lieutenant is widely speculated that she was fathered by her mother"s half-brother Lord Byron, although her mother"s husband Colonel George Leigh was her official father.
Three days after her birth, Byron visited Augusta and the baby. The child"s middle name was taken from the heroine of Byron"s poem The Corsair. In the family, she was known as Elizabeth or "Libby", but she also later used the name Medora.
Medora Leigh"s later life was a troubled one.
Leigh later had an affair with a French officer who abandoned her. She ultimately ended up with his servant, a former sergeant called Jean-Louis Taillefer with whom she went to live in south Aveyron (a hilly region in southwestern France) in Versols et Lapeyre (near Street Affrique and Sylvanes).
She bore Taillefer a son, Elie, (27 January 1846 - 29 January 1900), who later became a Roman Catholic priest in Aveyron. Leigh married Taillefer on 23 August 1848, legitimizing both children.
She died in France on 28 August 1849 in Versols-et-Lapeyre, where the grave can be visited.
